The seed of my current novel came to me in the form of a dream in the fall of 2009. My husband, Rob, and I had just moved to Moscow, Idaho so I could attend the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Idaho, and we were driving back to visit family. It was late—we left after he got off of work—and I fell asleep in the car. The dream was like watching a movie, like I’d walked in during the middle of a film. A barn was burning. Someone was trapped inside. I wasn’t in the dream, nor was anyone I knew, but it felt real and clear and stunning. I started taking notes and brainstorming that night when we arrived at Rob’s parent’s house. For the next three years, I worked on the novel here and there, but it took a backseat to the essays and coursework I was completing for my MFA—I was studying non-fiction and didn’t think I could dive into writing a novel while also honing that craft. After graduating in 2012, I began to work on the novel in earnest.
Which means I have been working on this manuscript for over a decade, a fact that floors me. I have pages of notes and outlines, pages of cut material, pages of rewrites. Sometimes, I wonder if this is even the same book that I started all those years ago. For instance, that burning barn? It’s not even in the current iteration. I have heard that the human body regenerates all of its cells every seven to ten years, which would mean that I am not the same person I was when I started, that my novel and I have both “turned over” at about the same rate.
The truth about cell regeneration is more complicated than the cocktail party factoid that claims “every seven years, you replace all your cells.” Some cells, like skin cells, regenerate every few weeks, while others, like skeletal muscle cells, take more like fifteen years. Some cells, like spinal cord cells, never regenerate. And, of course, as we age the rate of cellular regeneration slows.
But this complexity actually makes the comparison to my novel and its many revisions more apt. Some sentences have been removed and replaced, as have some paragraphs, scenes, chapters, and even whole characters. Others have changed in some way but still retain fundamental characteristics. The overarching structure remains, and my three main characters still resemble their younger versions, just like I do.
Like all of us, a decade has brought a great deal of change my way, including starting a career, shifting careers, birthing my son and raising him, buying and renovating a house, selling that one and buying a new one, and so on. But I still value the same things, mainly connection with loved ones and the sense of verity I find most profoundly in Wyoming’s wild places.
And, at its core, that’s what my novel is about, at least to me. Which is what I’ve been trying to capture on all the pages I’ve written trying to find its truest shape. I do think I’m close. I will not spend another decade working on this book—it is time to regenerate what needs turned over, then let what I have learned carry me forward into new projects. Ones that will grow and change as I do but which I hope will always reflect my own deepest core, the part of me that will remain even after all the cells that compose me have gone on.